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Thursday, May 18, 2017

Fragile Forktail

The evening of May 3, 2017 found us parking in front of a motel near Fremont, Indiana. To our delight, a small damselfly landed on the car trunk—a ready-made white background. The Fragile Forktail’s scientific name is Ischnura posita. Ischnura refers to this ode’s small size. The species name, posita, alludes to the exclamation mark on the top of the male’s thorax (Paulson and Eunkle 2016).

Despite this species being new to us, it is common and widespread across eastern North America, south through Mexico to northern Central America. A few Minnesota records exist. Fragile Forktails were introduced to Hawaii in 1936 and is now found on all but one of the major islands.